The Laws of Physics in an Animation Universe

Tony Opee
Physics of Animation

10/19/10

Predators

The movie starts out with the main character free falling from an extremely high altitude. He reaches his terminal speed before deploying his parachute before hitting the ground. I think if it was real life then I would have violently hit to ground because the parachute did look like it opened in time for him to fall to a terminal speed with the parachute open in order for him to reach the terminal speed with the parachute open. It would take a couple of seconds longer since it takes time to reach a terminal speed with different objects occupying different thickness for the air resistance to catch it.

The characters are in this strange world the physics rules work the same as it would on earth except for some things. The lady character tried setting a campus on the water with a life and a magnetic pin and it kept spinning meaning the core of the planet they are in doesn’t have a north pole or a south pole. So far the sun has not move ever since they got to that place the characters are starting to believe that they are not on planet earth. The planet is vast and there are visible planets when you look into the sky I figured if there were planets in close proximity like that then the gravity strength would be different from earth.

There came as scene where there were dog like creatures. They ran really fast, but they were larger than dogs and they also looked heavier. The way they were animated they looked like they were barely touching the ground while they were running. Also the way the animals were running the ground didn’t have any disturbance from their feet.

Judging from the atmosphere and the way the characters are breathing and moving around I would say that the air pressure of this planet is similar to earth. If it was slightly larger or smaller the human characters would have trouble moving around, breathing, and even talking. The alien creatures are larger stronger and they move pretty fast. They also have cloaking devices to hide themselves and also they use heat sensors to see their prey. They have advanced weapons like lasers that shoot some kind of energy.

At this point of the movie everything is pretty much similar in terms of physics rules as the earth’s the air pressure, gravity air quality based on how they are breathing and how projectiles such as bullets, fire and smoke act in the environment act very similarly to earths. Visually there are some things that are so different from the earths for example the creature sizes, the sky filled with planet and the sun not setting for a long time. Since it’s a move visually it has to look like something we have never seen before to give the elusion that we are in a different world. This was done for the sole purpose of not confusing the audience when they are watching the movie. They had to put some rules that are familiar to us earthlings so that we can concentrate on the story and get entertained by the movie.

Almost at the end there was a fight scene a swords man vs. the predator alien. The human character was moving in a more realistic manner and the alien was moving kind of slow like its some guy wearing a costume. The thing that was done to make something that is realistic and has physics rules then the movie makers were not successful in portraying the strength and weight of the alien characters. The aliens looked like people were in them, but their faces were pretty realistic.

The alien fight scene began and the two aliens started fighting each other. They were moving in a really slow pace. This fight scene was more realistic because it looked like they paid attention to their size and the weight of the aliens. The movements of the aliens are slow and they took time to swing their blades. One scene where there was an explosion near one of the aliens showed the alien tumbling backwards in a way that is not realistic. The explosion happened in real time but the way the alien was pushed backwards didn’t have a realistic tumbling reaction because of how the alien flipped slowly in the air.

Okay now it’s going towards the end of the movie and we have the scene where the main character covers him with mud so that his heat signatures are not detected by the aliens. I further looked into this to find out whether it’s possible to block heat from being visible by a heat detector with mud and according to myth busters that is would be false. One thing that would happen when you cover yourself with mud is your body would warm up the mud and you would be detected by a heat sensor. One clever thing that the human character did was he set fires on multiple layers to confuse the alien because they see the infrared light. I also learned that you can block the infrared light by placing a piece of glass in front of the sensor.

Another fight scene went under way and the characters did some major damage to the alien which of which one could see the green glowing blood. The green blood looked like it was emitting light. So it would make sense if the alien would have visible green glowing veins flowing in his body that would be visible in his exterior body. The green glowing veins would also add an interesting texture to the alien design and would make the whole things congruent with the bleeding out of green glowing blood.

The movies are made to entertain us and we honestly don’t know who this world would be like in terms of physics rules. I am guessing other worlds would be totally different from our earth and everything would act differently in terms of physics rules based on subtle differences in size of planet, air pressure, and gravitational pull of how close it is to the son. These attributes have to match exactly to earths in order for human life to be sustainable. Having this in mind movies tend to have earth like words that a similar to earth’s in terms of types of vegetation, atmosphere, air and animals. For entertainment purposes we need features of that world to have some similarities to earths or else it would take time for the human mind to process all that information while paying attention to the movie.

The planet where the characters were in the movie Predators was set in a world that is very similar to earths. The vegetation in the beginning of the scene resembled what one would find on earth. The actors even mentioned some places on earth because they were trying to figure out where on earth they were. Also as the characters were walking in the forest one character encountered a plant and as he was about to touch it the other character warned him about touching that poisonous plant and he even mentioned the name of the plant. The only way he would know the plant is if came across it on earth or he read about it. These are ways they used to make the world familiar to us earthlings as we are watching it we could relate what’s going on with the characters. Another thing that made this move interesting because of the similarities of the planet to earth it gave us something to relate to and also it made us feel more sympathetic to the characters that were in this alien world. There were some subtle differences like the character mentioning that the sun never moved from the time they where dropped on the planet. In terms of the spectrum (hues) of the movie they had a similar choice of colors as earth. I would think that in other planets plants would be different color or they would have a slight difference on how they looks since the sun is out longer and the nights are longer. I would picture the leaves to be small and the forest to be slightly different due to the temperature and creatures.

The movie kept me engaged due to the design of the world they kept it simple and straight to the point, there were no crazy physics that was going on that would have the audience process while watching the movie. There was nothing that was that unique to in this film that would make the physics rules jump out at me. I think they closely designed this movie to closely match earth so that we can concentrate more on the action and the story. Now that I watched this move with the aliens in their natural habitat I would like to go back and watch the older predator movie that was based on earth to see how differently the aliens acted on planet earth.